


Featherhead

by Liondragon (Sameshima_Shuzumi)



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Ableist Language, Alternate Universe - Wings, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Bullying, Character Study, Culture Shock, Early in Canon, Gen, Graphic Description of Involuntary Genital Injury, Gratuitous Capitalization, Insecurity, Media Front, Medical Conditions, Minor panic attack, Name-Calling, Nazism, Origin Story, Ostracism, Physical Disability, Propaganda, The Invaders, Wingfic, Wings Out To Punch Nazis, Worldbuilding, body image issues, emotional misunderstandings, headwings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-08 13:23:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16430207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sameshima_Shuzumi/pseuds/Liondragon
Summary: Fine, then. He couldn't fly. Steve Rogers would learn to run.A/N:Injury descriptions are graphic!Open-ended.Without further ado: the wingfic where Steve is born with his headwings.





	Featherhead

**Author's Note:**

> Physical wings on human's backs with some bird-like behaviors. For more mystical Marvel wings, visit [_Afterfeather_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5647294). For the first boat to land on this cake, that'd be copperbadge's headwings post, et al, and this is not so much cake as A Deceptive Jelly Donut.
> 
> Switched 616 to Brooklyn (which it is already??) for better flyways; I imagined the latest New Deal regulations would shut those down on the Lower East Side. And Steve ended up Ults-like... if anyone wants to adapt this to Ults, or in general, that would be fantastic. In retrospect should've gone with Avengers Ambiguous fandom, because post-ice with Clint would've been that much more acute.
> 
> I want to stress that this is period-typical in a way that's more severe than nostalgic. Society is way different when infant survival is never guaranteed. E.g. the Coney Island Incubator Babies are real in our universe. Also: this fic is not finished, and does not have an ending. It's more of a chronicle, for the purpose of worldbuilding on a fictional universe not my own (oh hey, disclaimer!) There's practically no dialogue in this, what even am I...! Who is this chirper?! And also because 616 Steve does despondent so well. Poor glum chicklet. I don't know anything about anything, feel free to speculate.

_unauthorized duplication and distribution prohibited_

Steve Rogers near killed his mother on the day that he was born. His ma didn't want him to know that; the neighborhood biddies made sure he did, waiting till he was half-turned away before throwing hex signs with clawlike hands. Their wings always flashed when they did, though, so there was no use hiding from Steve. He gathered the details of it before he was well enough to start school. Medical realities were hardly gruesome to him. His ma made sure of that, explaining everything that could go right with a human body while practically everything that could go wrong happened to him.

Still, the guilt of it weighed him down more than any hunched back or packed ballast. He'd hurt his _ma_ , his wing folded wrong and caught and ripping through her birth canal. She'd almost bled out while the doctors worked on his fracture, wailing and wailing, and she still lay awake long enough to beg them not to clip him, that there was nothing vestigial about Steve's wings. Steve knew all about that because the nun who'd saved his wings told him so. He was sharp enough to catch how smug she was about her timely intervention. After each telling, she flicked his wingtips like he owed her one, but couldn't, because Steve was supposed to owe God. And she never told it where his ma could hear.

Steve didn't know why he ought to be grateful. The doctors should have ripped them out. He'd rather have a box of feathers and bone than to have caused his mother pain, though of course he never told his mother that. She'd had to have done a lot of convincing, bleeding and in agony, to make them overlook such a visible defect. In fact, they'd even telephoned the quack in Coney Island who was displaying miracle babies in his "artificial nests." The quack had turned them down; both baby and mother weren't healthy enough to travel. Too mangled up for a so-called king of last chances. Even after they were discharged, ma was too injured to care for him alone, for a whole year, and for years after that, she was still beholden to flocks not her own. And all for what? They had to live in this part of town to find a building with a street-level entrance. The rest of the tenement was populated by drunks and degenerates and men crippled by war, limping past Steve in long cloaks to conceal their stumps, and worse. His ma would tut at him, and tell him he was perfect exactly as he was.

The crooked right wing on his head told him otherwise. He'd hurt his mother before he could breathe, and in a fit of childish pique swore he would never get over it. He'd never wail like a baby over anything, ever, never ever again.

To add insult to injury, they weren't even vestigial. Who knew if Steve could've flown with them, planted on the crown of his skull like cannibal trophies, if he hadn't the body of a runt. Heck, he'd take gliding. He sometimes scratched out how that would work, how his neck and shoulder muscles would be uncommonly strong, how he could bank with barely a tilt of his head. Then he'd reckon that a strong wind would probably snap his neck, and the rosy picture would collapse. In any case, his mismatched wings flapped, and they were tiny as frog's legs, and they were attached to his head.

He spent so many seasons cooped up with his fragile body that he didn't have the sense to hover close every time he got well. He loved Brooklyn. He loved going to the children's library, and climbing trees in the park, and watching the rocket couriers zoom to the docks and back again. Brooklyn, though, she never let him forget he was different. Other kids got hollered at when they flew into clotheslines. Steve got the morning washwater dumped on him to cover up his 'abomination.' Preachers held him up as a sample of Hell's corruption. Shopkeepers shooed him off their storefronts. Only the icemen took pity on him, letting him ride in the back when they made their deliveries, and even then he knew it was because their boss Mr. Garibaldi had two bum wings and got around in a wheelchair. The rest of the drivers would sooner run him over. The kids didn't let up, spurred on by the cold disapproval of their mothers. He learned first-hand what a Manhattan elbow was, before they named a drink after it: a jump-lift, a wingbeat, and a knee to the chest — Hot Air & A Broken Heart, done quick so as not to get caught. And they pointed at him, undaunted, even from across the street. Even babies tried to swipe at his wings, fascinated and not-quite repulsed.

Every now and then he'd get a curious onlooker, someone who wanted to know how his wings attached, what that had to do with the spinal deformities, whether he could spread them. He humored those ones, even though most of them wanted to stick him in Ripley's Believe It Or Not, or walk him over to Coney Island to make a buck with the other freaks. He saw it in how their feathers shivered — probably didn't know they were doing it. Now and again some joker would scoop him up under his armpits and convey him for a couple of flaps. He'd go limp, let them have their fun, ready with an elbow of his own if friendly ribbing got out of hand. Mostly the others spat at him, or kicked him away. They stared at him when he used the stairs. They made him grovel for cans and boxes on top shelves, acted surprised that he had the dexterity to catch.

Fine, then. He couldn't fly. Steve Rogers would learn to run.

Brooklyn had only a few greenways for takeoffs and landings. The new fire hydrants were already dented from leaping feet. (The Girder Gliders of the Brooklyn Bridge had been outlawed years back in favor of river traffic.) The rest was a warren of alleys that Steve frequented, too narrow for aerial attacks. They stank, aggravating his lungs, but he grew to love finding little shortcuts through the maze, pretending he was a spy trying to cross a border instead of a nobody sneaking through gang-patrolled territories. 

He learned to fight before he could throw a punch. Grown-ups wouldn't bother him beyond a bit of judgmental looming or a threatening swoop. The kids were more cruel, and less coordinated, and Steve found he could throw off their balance by leaping for an ankle and hanging on till he was thrown off. They were as afraid of breaking their bones as Steve was. The difference was Steve's lack; he could bounce off a brick wall and come up swinging, where another at full span would have hit their back, stunned and frightened of injury. Unfortunately the kids learned fast, too. They dive-bombed him, screeching like common gulls, pelted him with sticks and bottlecaps. "Featherbrains!" they'd taunt. "We'll pluck your featherbrains and stuff a pillow with you!"

His ma gave him a cap to hide under, but it was too big for him, marked him like a target. They stole it, made him play keep-away. Sometimes it was in fun, and he'd laugh and climb the downspouts and run after them among the chimneys. Mostly he risked breaking his wings when they ripped it off his head. He took to stuffing it in his pocket and walking around bareheaded. Everyone knew who he was, after all.

Real trouble cropped up when the boys grew into their wings, started learning how to punch without losing their balance, started gaining in such shoulder breadth and wingspan that polite society got them into walking with feathers folded back. They didn't know this part of Brooklyn like Steve did, but that advantage diminished, too. Now that they were older, they began to corner Steve in his favorite alleys. He had to switch routes just to go to the drugstore. Used to be he could try to touch them, play up their fears about his condition being communicable. They knew better this time. Steve spent half the summer of '35 in one splint or another. He even broke the other wing, and for a while had a matched set. Then for once his body worked as it should, the hollow bones knitting... except too rapidly, and Steve was lopsided again.

His ma had passed away by then, her mementos down to the threadbare cap he never wore, the rest of it sold or pawned off by Arnie's parents. Arnie wasn't a bad guy, looked after Steve when he had a minute, so Steve didn't say anything when his parents pocketed some of the proceeds. Steve had to stay ahead of the eight-ball, always, not only because he was poor. 'Featherbrains' was his second name, practically, and if he really did act like he had feathers for brains, he'd never get out of it. Worse yet, some do-gooder might take it into their head to haul him to the asylum. They'd outlawed the cages, but Steve heard they still clipped wings. Bureaucracy was stone-stupid enough that they might do the same to him, no matter that he could hop higher than he flew.

So besides the fights, Steve earned himself a reputation as an egghead. Sure, he'd drop off a fire escape on some drunks trying to corner an oddball late at night, or pick on Simple Sandy who lived with his grandmother, or accost the peacocks who were weaving drunk themselves and just trying to make it to a trolley stop. The next day he might sell a sketch to the same toughs, their feathers glistening with fresh oil, or quote a poem in Italian, before they flew off to serenade their honeys. He could pack a wagon with a third more merchandise than the average driver, though it'd break his back to haul the boxes himself. He got flocks in and out of rallies. He was better than a hobo's chalkmark for finding free beds and warm soup. He did a sketch of a trolley accident, got ten whole dollars for it, and briefly considered joining up with an 'Irish squad' before the eyesight restrictions came up.

And the fact that he couldn't fly.

Still, he became dependable Steve Rogers. Pathfinder of the neighborhood. Always polite unless you were menacing down. He was too weak to be a fixer, though. His ma would've said he was too strong — Steve just couldn't look the other way, even if it meant fresh paper in his wallet and food on the table.

People only called on Steve when they needed him. Even on brighter days, Steve wouldn't call it company. Arnie talked to him, sure, and checked on him, and fussed. Arnie worked all the time at the docks, and had a big sturdy back to show for it. Steve picked out Arnie's courting gifts and never got any for himself. He picked out courting gifts for the whole block, and they'd get a running start for Atlantic Avenue to take off for mating displays before the sunset ran out. Once it did, the ledges would be packed with girls necking with their mates. If Steve was out and about, he'd have to watch for rejected suitors too drunk to break their fall. Arnie said he should put himself out there, give it a try. How could he, when a potential mate would look first at the empty space over his narrow shoulders, and then — at his face, with its scraggly, scarecrow pair of wings? Then what? What was he going to do, dance on the floor like a chicken? Lord, if anyone shoved him off a ledge, he'd break every bone in his body.

He was useful. That piddly stuff didn't matter; Steve knew which way the wind was blowing.

He picked up the pamphlets they dropped at the rallies. Sometimes opposing sides would meet up, and the clash wouldn't stay over water like it was supposed to. Steve was too far down to hear the skirmishes, but he got all the news just the same. They were talking about wingbreakers. They were talking about _nets_ ; supposedly the Vikings had used them, which Steve knew was an outright lie. They were talking about rows and rows of cages, whole traincars made into cages. As though all that would put bread in every bowl. There was talk that the Axis powers had already gone down that route. The story from the receiving end barely got out, because so few ships were being let in from the invaded countries. Didn't matter that the Gulf Stream kept most solitary flyers out of the Eastern Seaboard, if all that hot air still made it over. Sometimes solitaries tried it anyway. Not even flocks, not even small families would make it, on account of the new radar that was an open secret to anyone who went high-flying.

The winds weren't going to save America if someone invented an airship that could make the crossing intact. The boys on the docks were already on the lookout for submarines.

Steve dreamt of squadrons over Europe. He ached to serve. Every day he woke up to a broken body that wouldn't ever, ever let him.

  
  
  


Steve Rogers learned to revise his idea of "never, ever." 

Despite the all-encompassing wonder of the transformation, he first fixated on his wings. Gone was the lopsided injury that had plagued his life. He must be symmetrical now; the rest of him was. He found himself sad to see it go, the last remnant of his mother's sacrifice — then, as though the unworthy thought had caught up with him, something startled his keen senses.

It was his wings. He'd jumped when the now full, bright feathers had brushed the tops of his ears. "You were born flapping, remember that" were his mother's last words, and he'd been ashamed to be shamed by that, his mother's final gift to him. Here they were: flapping. He was ashamed anew to have treated her trials so poorly, to have taken her bequeathments for granted. His lungs were hale because she'd nursed him to health, and let him run. His arms were strong because she'd not let him rest. Project Rebirth had granted him height and weight, and guaranteed his health, and it had not built that up from nothing. All that flapping had done some good after all.

Before a mirror for the first time he took in figure he cut. Earthbound yet strong, stronger than a boxer with pelican wings. What would he have done with flying anyway? Old roosters on their first hang gliders would do better than he. He was liable to crash into the river. He could serve. That was the heart of it. There were hotbeds of Nazis and their sympathizers here at home. He could run faster now, his punches could go through walls, and he'd crash those nests, wings beating his hair into a halo.

After a few ruffled feathers over his lack of flight, the brass ordered him to do just that.

Alas, he'd foolishly thought that the procedure would solve all his problems. _Not so fast, Rogers._ Gossip about his birth defect had spread like wildfire, and soon the whole camp was picking on him. Some smartasses even did a mockery of a threat-flash by shaking their longfeathers by their ears. Then command noticed, and to Steve's chagrin, ordered him to play it up, to walk around either limp-winged or with feathers awkwardly stuffed under his helmet, turning Private Steve Rogers into more of a humiliating buffoon.

Then there was the costume. The initial designs looked like they were overcompensating for Steve's poor excuse of a threat-flash. And so did the final design. He was a bombing target on two legs. Fortunate that he had a shield. Instead of a frontpack, he had a harness for his shield. If he jumped a plane, the only parachutes were frontpacks; he had to check them, most were leftover from the last war. Where to stow his kit? They sewed purses to his belt; the metal, fall-proof cases which were a must for gentlemen would jingle like a jester, and were too heavy besides. He didn't need to take off, but he could hardly be carried in a knight's armor, so a lighter scalemail it was. The helmet? O dunk him in tar, that was awful. Some versions had compartments for his wings, which turned him into a patriotic mushroom. Those were only vetoed when he pointed out the resemblance to Nazi stormtroopers. The helmet woes went on even after that. Even when they got it right, some wag would chirp that he looked like an automobile hood ornament. One mortifying time the wingholes had been drilled too narrow, and his old bum wing had gotten caught. The break had knitted up in minutes instead of days, but he'd had to explain away turning green and nearly taking a dive at zero feet. He claimed he wasn't used to the pain. Was reprimanded, and told to do so, he was supposed to be a soldier.

For a while, Steve slept with his helmet on because he kept turning in the sack and smothering his new wings. He'd written it off as a headache before realizing he didn't have those anymore, not like before. (That was how Bucky stumbled on his identity, as a matter of fact.)

Worst of all, Steve kept displaying the wrong things. He'd only ever paid attention to flashes, which was ideal for card games, boxing matches, and keeping eyes peeled for bullies and enemy fire. Now with two fully functioning wings and a body anyone would mate with, Steve was still striking out. He had no clue how to dance. Wing displays were supposed to be second nature. This was fledgling stuff, innocent hand-holding and sharing-penny-candy kind of simple, and Steve was hopeless at it. After a flock of dames had tossed a drink at him and practically molted in his face, Bucky perched next to him and patted him on the blank between his shoulderblades and said "Better luck next time, champ." Bucky who was so much younger than him, and who hadn't had a proper nesting family. Who then proceeded to chirp and flutter his way to _two_ dates, one for the lunch hour and one for when she got off her work-shift; Steve hadn't the heart to report him. Steve kept his wings tight to himself all day long, and maybe even while he slept, and grit his teeth.

Matters did not improve when the propaganda machine got a hold of him. Or rather, got a hold of Captain America. Tales of the atrocities overseas were starting to trickle in. It was clear that Hitler's war party was turning their despicable ideologies into monstrous reality. That Captain America was the picture of the Aryan ideal with an obvious physical deformity was recruiting gold for the Allies. Steve quite agreed. He drew up a number of the posters himself. It was visually compelling, and an obvious way to stick it to all the bullies who would rather he'd not made it out of the crèche. The problem was he had to put _himself_ up on display. Captain America had to get up on stage and show off his... all-American wings. Steve gawked at the committee despite himself. What was that supposed to mean? Was Steve not American enough? Some Ivy Leaguer nearly told him to quit it with the Gaelic warbling, o angels and saints, Steve nearly decked him and he hoped his ma's spirit wasn't hovering to see that. They sent him to elocution lessons to smooth the Brooklyn out, which, again, made sense: he had to sound less like a polesitter and more like a radio drama. Then they sent him to a Broadway choreographer who'd tried to beat his wings into shape. 

She despaired of him in a quarter of an hour. They ended up practicing three wing forms. _**Majestic**_ , which was not a threat flash, not if he dipped his leading secondaries just so. _**Stern**_ , which Steve was permitted to envision as _Commanding_ , even if that brought up impressions of his drill sergeant. And _**Exuberant**_ , which should be like summer fireworks, and not clownish chicken-flapping. The last one gave him the most trouble. Mostly he splayed his wings as best he could and tried to think of knocking back Nazis, and less like he was a statue in the park for the pigeons to divebomb. The choreographer said she'd have an illustrated manual printed if she had thought he could handle more than three. Steve refrained from asking her about mating displays, and not because she resembled some of those neighborhood titterers.

The form Steve liked best was Wings Out To Punch Nazis. As he'd suspected, lifelong flyers were enamoured of their predictable drafts; after all, what ordinary joe would go flying in a hurricane? Warm breezes were easiest, even in the fickle crosswinds of New York City; if it rained, they hightailed for the subway. When an object in motion abruptly changed direction, they did more than startle. When that object changed direction in a wholly unpredictable manner, every bit of their training and not a small amount of their instinct _deserted_ them. At first Steve accomplished this by pushing off on hard surfaces (after a few false starts when those surfaces cracked or crumbled under his strength). Then he began to shift his center-of-gravity with minute adjustments of his wings. It was self-preservation, to begin with — hard to aim for a headshot if it wasn't there to be shot at. Then Bucky chimed in with suggestions; they took to training; and all of a sudden Steve was ricocheting on flat ground, with hardly any cover, as though all along his wings had grown to love running, too. 

And then they'd given him a new shield. When that something did all that and threw a second something which did the same _and_ bounced off other things in an inexplicable manner, enemies whited out like they'd caught too much altitude. Steve had more than one target plummet in fright. He supposed that was to be expected. Flyers had an instinctive fear of colliding into solid surfaces. "The poor saps," Bucky said what he was thinking. They'd share a grin. Who was the oddball now?

So there were plenty of advantages to recommend themselves for being Captain America. Then Steve Rogers would be granted liberty, and in hours he'd yearn for punching Nazis. He couldn't describe the sheer joy of dodging and striking with leaps and bounds instead of swoops and dives. It was too difficult to separate the tremendous honor to serve his country and save humanity's freedom without sounding like an arrogant prat. Or worse, coming off like a peacock and being hailed as an untouchable emblem of America. His three whole "wing displays" were exaggerated at best, inappropriate at worst. Babies still wanted to see him flap his wings. He had to smile sweetly for their mothers.

He and Bucky moved through battlefields like ghosts. Then they'd find themselves in a pocket of peace. Bucky, still relatively young, spread his wings like there was no tomorrow. Steve tucked his in, and planned their next fight.

There was a flutter of hope when the Invaders were formed. That was when Steve met Namor.

He had wings on his feet! What a world. They were as small as Steve's had been, before Rebirth. Steve thought they made him look classic, like a sculpture of Mercury, even if he wasn't so sure about Namor showing off his muscles as much as he did. It almost looked like the equivalent of a threat-flash. The mission was too hectic for idle twittering, though, so all Steve could do was observe. And hope he wasn't displaying strangely again. At least he could count on Bucky to rap him on the noggin if that was the case. Namor was indeed powerful (and let everybody know it), and during the mission he fought more or less like Steve, with fewer airborne moves. Was it the underwater upbringing? Had he started out in Atlantis? Did all Atlanteans have wings like that? There were flying fish, true, but perhaps these wings rode the currents like a ray, in a glide. Or... or acted as propellers! Like a submarine. Hah, Sub-Mariner. Steve longed to ask. Or at least trim it down to _one_ question, instead of spouting out the dozens he had and coming off as an idiot.

Then the mission ended. They collected their accolades. The Allies rewarded them with a permanent status. Steve finally stole a moment to speak with Namor...

...who could fly.

Steve was perhaps more flabbergasted than he should have been. After all, he and Bucky specialized in thwarting the strangest schemes the Nazis and Johann Schmidt could concoct. Namor didn't even explain how his flight worked, or why he stuck to ground-fighting, or if... if Steve could be friends with him. Namor turned his nose up at Steve. Oh, in time he would discover that Namor _was_ his friend, and also that in fact everything Namor did was a threat-flash. In the moment, Steve was crestfallen. Hesitantly he did ask if Namor wanted to incorporate his flight into their battle strategies. He got another three minutes of perfunctory conversation. Then Namor sauntered off like Steve was just another ground fowl. 

Well, he wasn't.

He _was_ the only member of the team who couldn't take flight.

That night Bucky joined him for his watch and sheltered him like a bright blue mama bird. Steve should've been embarrassed. He was already wallowing in it, though, so he ducked his head under Bucky's wings and let his own droop listlessly. Maybe he wouldn't imagine every ledge on every floor in Brooklyn lined with singing mates. The fabled Musical Staves of New York. Saucily the Brits called it Birds On The Wires. Steve declined to care for it; he just wanted someone to talk to. Someone who was like him. "Thanks, pal," Steve muttered. Bucky only shrugged, his feathers sniper-quiet. "He probably hates penguins," was all Bucky said. Bucky was the best.

  
  
  


Eventually Steve grew more accustomed to his role; his old worries seemed silly in retrospect. Flyer or not, his team had accepted him as their commanding officer. He got used to the grind of battle after battle, emerging from the worst fights glad that he had a team behind him. Glad he wasn't running alone. Instead of Brooklyn alleys, he had forests and fields and hedgerows. Let them dive bomb. Captain America took on all comers. Steve Rogers didn't give up.

Then came the day when Steve opened his eyes to find he hadn't stretched his definition of "forever" quite as much as required.

The tiniest person Steve had ever seen was hovering like a faery. He could feel the hummingbird gust on his damp cheek. She said his name, and he looked around, and... 

To his utter shame, the first thing he did when he met Iron Man was search the blank space around his armored shoulders.

In the next weeks, for all their adventures together, Steve spent a lot of time trying to apologize to Iron Man. Only it turned out Iron Man hadn't seen the encounter that way at all. Iron Man burbled that it was the best day of his life. Steve couldn't believe it. Even in this age, his treatment of him was unforgivably uncouth. Plenty of people sustained damage to their wings, and you could only stare if they called attention to it. And did they ever. Hard plastic sculptures. Metal piercings. Barebacked shirts displaying elaborate tattoos. Tony Stark had thousand dollar suits tailored to fit; Steve thought they made him look expensive while hinting at the nudity beneath. The same duds on Steve? He'd be a plucked chicken.

The point was that if staring wasn't solicited, you most certainly didn't do it. First impressions were still held at a premium these days. For all their peculiarities, Steve hadn't gaped at Thor, or Hank. Yet Iron Man brushed off the insult like it was nothing. He didn't seem the least bit condescending about it, wasn't coddling Steve like an old-timer. Steve remained bewildered, if relieved. Maybe Iron Man was like him, never having had proper wings. He obviously needed the armor to fly. Maybe the lack of wings didn't matter so much to him. (He certainly displayed no aversion for collisions with hard surfaces, much to everyone's consternation, not only Steve's.) Maybe it didn't occur to him to be upset. Steve was terribly envious.

Then it dawned on Steve: maybe Iron Man was like him! Naturally flightless. It would certainly explain why they got on so well. No sudden moves of his caught Iron Man unawares. This time when he was scooped up off the ground, Iron Man joked _with_ him. When he dived bombed, they could swoop as a singular unit. Steve didn't think he could move all that metal and two men with just his headwings, yet in his mind it felt that way when he unfurled to take a sharp corner, or put on the brakes, and Iron Man responded immediately. Mr. Stark had congratulated him the first time, and then gone on to mutter about inventing airbags for cars. Heck, Iron Man had even let Steve push off on his upper back, though he supposed the armor was built to take it. (Not putting feet on wings! Simulated or otherwise. That had been crude in the '30s as it was now, except nowadays there was an accepted term for it, and the, ah, adult industry claimed it as a genre.) With Iron Man, Steve rarely had to explain.

Oh, there were embarrassing moments, excruciatingly so. Once Iron Man had given him a wristwatch, a real nifty timepiece — only to say it was an apology gift. It took Steve over a week of pressing him to elaborate before Iron Man gave up and asked why he was angry with him, and if he would only let on so that Iron Man would refrain from offending him again... He was so downtrodden that Steve hadn't the slightest idea what to do. He almost returned the watch, until it became clear that would only crush Iron Man's spirits utterly. At last Steve had worked out that after the last Avengers meeting, his _Stern_ display had come out _Majestic_ , and—because he wasn't concentrating—that had looked like as massive a threat-flash as could be fit on the sides of his cranium. It was a mess. Steve had to haltingly explain. Criminy, Thor didn't have this trouble, and his headwings were extensions of his (magic) helmet. Instead of getting upset, Iron Man had nodded, and clapped him on the arm, and proceeded to build up a database of Steve's wing displays.

"It's all subconscious! There have been studies," said Iron Man, when Steve gawked at the amount of work before him. Computers or no, that was a lot of... processing room. (A switchboard was only as good as its operators, Steve got that much.) "Some of that Army training has stuck, sure. Of course everybody loves that 'What's it to you?' Brooklynite twitch. All that's not what's ingrained in you. Your displays are how you _express_ yourself, not how you appear to other people. You're an expressive kind of guy, Cap." That made sense to Steve. Iron Man was certainly well-versed in wearing masks, yet Steve could read him like a book. In return, Iron Man could do the same. When Steve brought it up, he shrugged it off as an effect of consulting the computer database; but Steve did not believe that for a moment.

In time the rest of the team caught on to how Steve was in private. Steve found himself displaying more fluidly to them. He consulted Iron Man's database — he'd assured Steve that Mr. Stark was helping program it — and began to discover, quite literally, who he was at home. He didn't take Iron Man's advice, and did practice in the mirror like a kid playing dress-up. It was fairly illuminating. Eventually the others got to know how Steve Rogers was, got to see him less stilted and cartoonish. They all had their quirks, sure, but they liked Steve just fine. This was no short burst of respite. Steve could relax.

None of them could entirely let their guard down, being on a superhero team. There were still more moments of _leisure_ than Steve knew what to do with. He caught up on his reading. He started buying art supplies. He went out; he took the subway and nobody stared at him. (They yelled at him for bumping their feathers, but then again, this was New York, and he couldn't say that was his famous shield in the bag.)

 _Just be yourself_. Not that this helped him much in public. True, there were fewer opportunities for him to bungle it up. Press conferences were a snap. The public had eaten up decades of posters with his three standardized displays. (Mr. Stark called them The Three Faces of Cap; Jan scolded him for half an hour and Steve still didn't get why.) Interviews were dicier, as people were refreshingly candid in a way that Steve both welcomed and could not wrap his head around. The Avengers got a part-time public relations manager. More tutoring. Only this time not only for him, as Thor had moments of blistering honesty in iambic pentameter. They were less drills than ... rehearsals. Instead of rote learning, he was told to be more natural. Whatever that meant.

His track record with the press steadily improved. Everyone nodded like they'd expected it. He didn't have the pizzazz of Jan or Mr. Stark or Iron Man, but he was getting the hang of it. In quiet, private moments, he preened like a kid who'd been pushed off a high pier and soared for the first time. 'Tipped out of the nest,' Bucky would laugh. Bucky might've been proud of him. Or at least conceded a clap on the back, and a wry 'You're doin' all right, Cap.'

Steve was still playing catch-up on two fronts. He had missed a lot of history. And being at war had not helped him learn to read displays beyond flashes. In turn, he tended to return only flashes, which did not come off as defiant and plucky as it had when he was a little guy. This time one leap could bring down a grown man cruising at roost level. A toss of the shield could reach higher. He could back up those threats, and how, even with his wings a fraction of the size of a grown man's. Or especially because the wings were small, because when he entered a room, all eyes locked on to his famous face... with their small, bright wings broadcasting his every stray thought. There was no fading into the crowd, or losing a tail in a maze of alleyways. If he folded them up indoors like all the other sensible flighted, the whole world asked what was the matter. At his lowest he castigated himself, and his troublesome wings, all the time causing unintended hurt. Invariably Jan would cheer him up, and Thor would invite him to spar until he'd thrown him on his back three times, and Iron Man would show him a vintage(!) poster of Captain America, wings forming a V for Victory, inspiring a generation and more. 

Realistically, Steve knew he had to get a handle on it. Facing off against a villain was one thing. Ordinary citizens were another. He had, in a sense, agreed to everyone in the world staring at his wings when he had signed up to ballyhoo as Captain America. Cap, as Tony Stark was fond of pointing out, always told the truth. That wasn't a hardship for Steve, not at all. But he couldn't tell it like it was and have his wings display something different. He had to quit looking like his feathers were constantly ruffled the wrong way.

All of which was partly why a million-and-one emotions swooped through him, with the sharp, sudden breeze of stiffly flared plumage, the first time Iron Man turned to him and said: "Some battle, huh, Winghead?"

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Is it a cliffhanger? Yes it is! Am I having an emotion? It's nearly 2am, I'd better. Will this be continued? Not a chance! Sorry, I warned. I was less interested in the Horrible Emotional Misunderstanding than the worldbuild and capitalizing emphatic catchphrases. And also Steve _calculating trajectories for both himself and the shield and being aces at it with brand new wings_. 
> 
> But good news everyone! Feel free to remix. Is Tony actually flightless, or/and does he have a traumatic origin story? What if Clint started it, in his annoying wannabe stage, and then Tony picked up the nickname from him? (Thank you to Sineala for answering my Clint ask; this made it Too Early for Clint, but that timeline info might still work in other fic.) Would _The Wizard of Oz_ 's flying monkeys be racist or scientifically progressive? Will we ever find out the name for the kink of putting one's feet on their partner's wings? Talk about how Tony designs clear goggles that snap down on the cowl for when Steve flings himself at enemies in mid-air like a peregrine falcon _who normally drops like a stone_.
> 
> Note: Hot Air & A Broken Heart is the airborne (stuntman) move of Steve's knee to the Winter Soldier's chest in CATWS. Presuming you memorized that fight scene, yes? In this universe, best done with big wings kicking up dust on the downbeat.
> 
> Wings Out To Punch Nazis. A big mood.


End file.
